Roads & Litter

CSG mining around Chinchilla has brought an enormous increase in traffic. Thousands of mine safe utes travel on the back roads and the Warrego Highway. Despite improvements to the highway, it now takes longer to travel to Dalby or Brisbane due in part to the speed limit being reduced from 110 kilometres an hour to 100.

‘The road toll went up by 25 percent in one year,’ said Chinchilla resident, Karen Auty. ‘Many others were injured. People are affected forever and that’s a huge unseen cost to the health system. People, unfamiliar with the area, drive after working very long hours, and go off the road. They are not used to kangaroos, emus and pigs jumping out in front of them. We have lots of 457s here. These overseas workers’ driving skills leave a lot to be desired.’

 ‘Every piece of pipeline, every drill rig, every bit of infrastructure comes into the area by road on very heavy equipment. It can be up to nine metres wide which means they have to close roads, including the Warrego Highway. It’s a constant interruption to traffic.’

‘A lot of money has been spent on grading back roads,’ said Karen. ‘QGC spruiks that they have contributed $42M to local roads but they are the roads they use, not the road outside my house or the main street.’

Another downside of the boom was that rubbish on the roadsides increased. ‘You’d drive out on any back road and think you were the only person out there until you got out of your car. You could not take one step without coming across cans, plastic or other rubbish that had been flicked out car windows by workers driving past.’